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As Alice Martin Bishop (AMB) researchers, we are fortunate to be looking for information in the same time period that the Mayflower passengers landed and settled in Plymouth Colony (followed quickly thereafter by John Winthrop and the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay Colony). It’s one of the most-researched eras in U.S. history, and although we can’t place any of our AMB ancestors on that ship, we can benefit from all of the information that has been found by people who are investigating their Mayflower roots.

In the recent issue of American Ancestors (Spring 2015), David Curtis Dearborn advises genealogists looking for Mayflower ancestors to check out the following sources, most of which can be found on AmericanAncestors.org (the name of the website of the New England Historic Genealogical Society, NEGHS). If you’re a member of the NEGHS, you can access these online sources, including the published Massachusetts vital town records to 1850, all issues of TheRegister, The American Genealogist (TAG), The Mayflower Descendant, Barnstable County probate records, Plymouth County court records (not to be confused with the Plymouth Colony Records, see below), and Plymouth town, vital, and church records. On FamilySearch.org, you can also find digitized copies of Plymouth County probate records and land records for every Massachusetts county. (Eugene Stratton, in Plymouth Colony, also includes a chapter called “Writers and Records” that points genealogists to the written sources for contemporary information on Plymouth Colony, and it’s a good idea to refocus and go back to these primary sources after you’ve been chasing squirrels on Ancestry.)

We haven’t yet exhausted all of these sources, and we welcome our readers to jump in and help. The court records of Martha Clarke’s murder and AMB’s trial can be found in the Plymouth Colony Records (also referred to as Plymouth Court Records, and abbreviated as PCR). It’s no easy feat, but we’ll walk you the process here.

Meet our 10x great grandmother. In 1648, Alice Martin Bishop of Plymouth Colony was hanged for the murder of her 4-year-old daughter, Martha Clarke. Join us as we reconstruct Alice’s world. Here, we learn more about her origins, her husbands, her surviving children, and her Puritan community — all in an attempt to make sense of a crime so unnatural, it continues to fascinate, nearly 400 years later.

There is no grave marker for Alice Martin Bishop, nor her three daughters. We can’t tell you where George Clarke or Richard Bishop is buried — not the town or cemetery. Matter of fact, given her crime, Alice may be buried in an unmarked grave far from her family and neighbors.

Legible headstones before 1700 are rare. The earliest grave markers were made of wood and have, naturally, not survived. As stone cutters came to the colonies, their work included memorials, but many of these have faded or crumbled thanks to erosion, lichen, vandals, and robbers.

Yes, vandals and robbers. For decades now, some of our oldest cemeteries’ gravestones have been stolen, defaced, and used as lawn chairs and ashtrays. Charming, America.

This post shares discussions and insights Kristin and I had after visiting Plimoth Plantation’s 1627 town site (November 2014). The good people at Plimoth Plantation have re-created the first settlement in painstaking detail, and it turns out, a Plymouth home — our AMB crime scene — wasn’t exactly as I had imagined it. The homes were smaller and with lower ceilings than I had figured (of course, I’m nearly six feet tall, so I have a skewed perspective). Also, the houses sat closer together than I had mentally plotted.

Map of Plimoth village

We spent two days at Plimoth Plantation, viewing the homes and speaking with reenactors. As we shared our thoughts about Martha’s murder based on what we saw there, it must be remembered this is a 1627 re-creation — in other words, twenty years before her death. By the 1640s, colonists had more tools and construction supplies, and homes were built under less dire circumstances. Within two decades of the Mayflower’s arrival, several towns were developing in the wider colony, but we assume the Bishops lived in Plymouth town proper because the Ramsdens and Winslows (Josiah, head) were their neighbors.

We are always on the lookout for the pre-Plymouth origins of our main characters, Alice Martin, George Clarke, and Richard Bishop. The more we research and learn, the more real these people become, and certain discoveries can be as titillating as any 21st century gossip. It was this kind of excitement that passed between Erin and me via text message, when I mentioned my latest find — that Edward Doty’s wife was named Faith Clarke. “GTHO” Erin texted back moments later, and after I figured out what “GTHO” meant (“Get the hell out!”), I realized that she was just as delighted as I was.

If you look back at Erin’s piece on The Elusive George Clarke, you can read about Clarke’s disputes with Doty, and why Doty’s marriage into a Clarke family is potentially significant.

The records indicate that the two were likely farming neighbors as Clarke drags Dotey into court claiming the latter is denying him access to his lands (PCR, vol 8., October 1637). In June of 1638, Dotey is fined for physically assaulting Clarke (vol. 1), and the bad blood continues for another four years, when Clarke is ordered to pay Dotey four bushels of corn for some infraction (vol. 2, February 1642).

If George and Faith were siblings, Doty’s and Clarke’s disputes over property lines could be explained as mundane in-law squabbles. Eugene Stratton, in Plymouth Colony: Its History & People, points out possible hostilities between Doty and his in-laws when, on “4 January 1641/42 the court settled differences between Doty and Thurston Clarke (father-in-law or brother-in-law?) by ordering Clarke to pay corn and money to Doty (PCR 2:30)” (Stratton, page 284). However, Doty had issues with many different people, most of whom were not named “Clarke.”

Ask Kristin. I am a curmudgeon of tourist. I sneer at the gift shops, recoil at the fellow visitors replete with whining teenagers and their fanny-packed parents. So, as we planned our trip to Plymouth, I dreaded the notion of visiting Plimoth Plantation on a Saturday in November. I’m all for historic preservation, but seriously questioned the quality of historic reenactments. For the record, “Plimoth” is the spelling Governor Bradford used in his history of the colony.

Attitude, camera, and notebook in hand, I headed down to the 1627 “authentic” Plimoth village and was immediately smitten. Kudos to the nonprofit Plimoth Plantation for an engaging and transformative experience. I was especially impressed with the reenactors and their training (a new source of fascination for Kristin and myself). If there is an international standard for reenacting history, I’d wager Plimoth is setting it. Do visit – with your children or students especially – and live some American history.

Plimoth Plantation Nov 2014

Certainly, the museum needs to fund itself so there is the usual array of retail – ye old tyme thermal mug, authentic colonial fudge (cocoa wouldn’t be seen in New England for at least another century). But these are kept at a tasteful distance from the reenactment sites. And, in full, ashamed disclosure, I skipped the Wampanoag village (Native American) as I was so intent on spending time in a home similar to Alice Martin Bishop’s.

The Plymouth Town Records tell us that in 1653, “Abigaill Clarke” registered “a half moone on the right eare” as her unique branding mark, to identify her cow from other wandering Plymouth bovine (vol. 1, p. 2).

For some reason, I’m having trouble getting the image of Abigail and her cow out of my mind. It’s a poignant picture I’ve been creating, of the lonely 12-year-old orphan with no one to love — or to love her back — but her cow. (I don’t know if cows show affection, but if Abigail fed it, it was probably glad to see her. My Oklahoma cousin Erin, somewhat of an expert, tells me: “They will nuzzle you if you show up with oats, but they aren’t going to spoon you in bed or validate you.”)

Cattle were plentiful in New England in the 1640s, to the extent that their value had dropped significantly by the time the Great Migration began to peter out in the early years of that decade. But while their value as a trading commodity decreased, they still played an important part in the daily lives of Puritan families — cows for dairy and breeding, gelded males primarily for draft work (Chartier, see below).

Historians’ perceptions of the Pilgrims and life in Plymouth Colony evolve as discoveries are made — previously unpublished probate inventories shed light on what the colonists wore or owned, freshly unearthed archaeological finds provide insight into the buildings that housed those colonists, or the items they used to conduct the business of daily living.

Our recent trip to Plimoth Plantation allowed us to peek through a re-created window into Alice Martin Bishop’s world, and gave us a sharper focus on the tool that is at the heart of her crime – the knife.

What we previously assumed to be a crude and rare item turns out to have been a common household possession. All men would have had their own knife, and most goodwives would have owned one as well — or possibly shared one if more than one adult female lived in the household.

I feel like a real Cotton Mather (a Puritan joke of pitiable proportions) to suggest this so close to Thanksgiving, but today, as I read the story of Hannah Duston, I wondered why we never considered another possible killer.

Goodwife Hannah Duston lived in the western, frontier town of Haverhill, Massachusetts, at the very end of the seventeenth century. Her home was overtaken by natives on a retaliatory warpath. The men took Hannah, her attending midwife (for Hannah had just delivered six days prior), and then “brained…against a nearby apple tree” her infant daughter who was…wait for it….named Martha (Davis, 45). Hannah eventually escaped – a gruesome tale that can he read here.

Obviously, Martha was a common name. As were Indian raids and hostage taking. Many hostage colonists were incorporated into native communities, often as servants. Others were ransomed off, back to their English communities or enemies such as the French. Alden Vaughan and Daniel Richter summed that more than 1600 regional colonists were kidnapped between 1675 and 1763. Bloody interactions with native peoples were certainly a more common colonialexperience and expectation than any turkey-centered feasting. Indeed, Alice’s adulthood would have been marked by outright wars, raids, and murdering on both sides.

However, there is absolutely zero indication that an Indian came into the Bishop home and slaughtered Martha. Undoubtedly, the jurors and Governor Bradford would have made such a possibility public knowledge. For this scenario to be feasible, we have to imagine the Bishops not living in a town setting like Barnstable or Plymouth where houses sat very close together. As Plymouth Colony expanded and new lands were settled, this is, admittedly, a possibility. But it still doesn’t make a great deal of sense. Why would Alice confess to the crime rather than point the finger? What about the knife? Did the murdering native arrive empty handed and pick up the kitchen knife? Or was he (or, she?) in possession of English tableware and chose that over a tomahawk to kill Martha? Not likely. Why Martha and not Alice, Abigail, and Damaris as well? Why leave the weapon behind?

Kristin and I are heading to Plymouth in the coming week and we are beyond excited! We’ll share lots of pictures and insights from our trip. We have this pipe dream that we will come across Alice’s diary (which tells us who her parents are), her confession as to why she killed Martha (or who the real killer is), cause of death for George Clarke, and what happened to his daughter, Abigail. Perhaps, we have overly ambitious expectations….

On another note, I want to publicly thank my outstanding co-author, Kristin Luce. She is 100 percent the motivation for this blog overhaul. Many of the pieces on this blog reflect Kristin’s high-caliber work and discuss matters I had never considered. Kristin asks the best questions as a critical reader and keeps my punctuation from being another family crime.